What It Was Really Like The Day The Music Died
Winter storms, dramatic last words, and the coin toss that saved a life — and took one. Here's everything that happened on The Day the Music Died.
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00:00Winter storms, dramatic last words, and the coin toss that saved a life — and took one.
00:06Here's everything that happened on the day the music died.
00:09On February 3, 1959, Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, and Richie Valens boarded a four-seat
00:14Beechcraft Bonanza plane piloted by Roger Peterson. They'd just finished their final
00:18show at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa, having wrapped up at around midnight. Unfortunately,
00:23things went wrong mere moments after the plane took off. After flying roughly five miles,
00:28a witness saw the plane — or, rather, its taillight — suddenly start losing altitude.
00:32Air traffic control lost radio contact with Peterson before long, and it soon became evident
00:37that the plane had crashed.
00:38To be honest, they weren't in the air very long.
00:41The Beechcraft Bonanza was traveling at 170 miles per hour when it hit the ground. Only
00:45Peterson remained inside the plane, as the impact was so powerful that all three musicians
00:50were thrown from the aircraft.
00:51Worse yet, the extremely bad weather meant that there was no way for a rescue party to
00:55access the wreckage before morning, so the bodies had to lie in a field for hours. Holly's
01:00autopsy report later revealed that the impact had taken his life instantly, in the most
01:04gruesome of ways.
01:06Buddy Holly had embarked on the Winter Dance Party tour largely because he needed money,
01:10and it was he who made the decision to fly to North Dakota. The tour was a young man's
01:14game. Holly was 22 at the time of his death, the Big Bopper was 28, and Richie Valens only
01:1917 years old. Holly was the de facto leader of the artists, and it was he who ultimately
01:23felt the conditions on the road were becoming too much to bear. It was a bad winter, and
01:27their tour bus was as cold as it was unreliable, having already broken down on the road.
01:31What's more, the distance between their February 2nd concert in Iowa and their upcoming gig
01:35in Minnesota was a staggering 400 miles. The combination of a barely functioning tour bus
01:40and the long road that lay ahead was enough for Holly to decide to charter a plane instead.
01:45Since he and the other musicians were running out of clean clothes due to their grueling
01:49tour schedule, Holly intended to take everyone's laundry with him and wash it while waiting
01:54for those who would arrive by a bus.
01:56In different circumstances, the Big Bopper might have survived the crash that killed
01:59him — or rather, wouldn't have been a part of it at all. This is because he wasn't originally
02:03supposed to be on the plane. Buddy Holly intended to take his own two band members on board
02:08while the others were going to travel by bus.
02:10Bopper's place was originally meant to go to future country superstar Waylon Jennings,
02:14who played bass in Holly's band at the time. However, Jennings was feeling under the weather,
02:18so he decided to ride the bus that left Bopper in the plane instead.
02:21This moment of kindness might have saved Jennings' life, but it also led to the Big
02:25Bopper's death. The haunting exchange Jennings had with Holly before the plane departed cast
02:30a dark shadow over his survival. When Holly joked that he hoped the tour bus would freeze
02:34up again, Jennings replied,
02:35"...well, I hope your old plane crashes."
02:38Though he lived on and became a highly popular artist in his own right, Jennings' life was
02:42plagued by financial issues, health problems, and personal troubles. He also spent years
02:46haunted by his words to Holly, harboring a great deal of survivor's guilt.
02:50"...when you feel like, you feel guilty about it, and everything, you know, you're thinking,
02:55trying to find reasons that you might have caused it, you know?"
02:59Jennings died in 2002 at the age of 64.
03:03Richie Valens wasn't supposed to be on Buddy Holly's charter plane, either, but he really,
03:07really wanted to be. Like everyone else on the tour that year, Valens was thoroughly
03:11fed up with the conditions on the tour bus. When he heard of Holly's flight and found
03:14out that it was already full, he started negotiating for Tommy Elsup's seat. Ultimately, Holly's
03:18guitar player agreed to settle the matter with a coin toss. He was thrilled to win, too. Before
03:23boarding the plane, he reportedly said,
03:25"...that's the first time I've ever won anything in my life."
03:27Elsup went on to continue his music career after the crash. He died in 2017 at 85 years old.
03:33He understood how incredibly fortunate he was to avoid the plane crash,
03:36but like Waylon Jennings, also struggled with guilt over the incident.
03:40Aside from the musicians, the pilot of the plane also died in the crash that night.
03:44An investigation by the Civil Aeronautics Board eventually found that the 21-year-old
03:48Roger Peterson was at fault for the crash. Per the investigators, he didn't have the
03:52necessary instrument training to operate an aircraft in such difficult conditions.
03:56While there were no witnesses to the crash, outside of the few folks at the airport who
04:00saw the lights of the plane descending from miles away, the investigators found out that
04:04Peterson hadn't been accurately informed of the incoming bad weather, and when the snowstorm hit,
04:08he had to pilot the plane without being able to see anything. Since he hadn't been adequately
04:12trained to fly using the plane's instruments alone and couldn't see the horizon, he may have
04:17become disoriented, which could have led to the crash. In 2015, a pilot named L.J. Kuhn attempted
04:22to get the National Transportation Safety Board to reopen the investigation to potentially clear
04:26Peterson's name, citing passenger unrest, weight distribution issues, and other factors as potential
04:32contributors to the crash. Kuhn told the Pilot Tribune,
04:35"[Roger would have flown out and about this airport at night, under multiple different
04:38conditions. He had to be very familiar with all directions of this airport, in and out."
04:42However, the board decided that Kuhn's input didn't warrant further investigation.
04:47In 1959, lines of communication were very different than they are now. There were no
04:51mobile phones or internet, so when a group of people were stuck on the road in a freezing bus,
04:56they were effectively isolated from the rest of the world. As such, the Winter Dance Party
05:00Tour members who weren't in the plane didn't find out about the tragedy before they were
05:04already in Minnesota for their gig later that day. Buddy Holly's family members also heard
05:08of the crash in a truly awful manner. His wife, Maria Elena, was six months pregnant,
05:13and was waiting for her musician husband to call her from the road when she found out about the
05:16news from the television. This traumatic moment has been blamed for her miscarriage,
05:20which took place shortly after learning of Holly's death.
05:23"'I knew that if I would have been there, Buddy would have not taken the plane,
05:29because I would have put my foot down and said no.'"
05:32Elena did not attend the funeral and has never visited her husband's grave. In 2019,
05:37she told the Mirror that she thinks about him every day.
05:40The plane crash also had a surprisingly profound impact on the way such tragedies are reported
05:44these days. After Holly's family learned about his death via the media, authorities recognized
05:48that something had to be done to avoid similar tragedies in the future. As such, airlines and
05:52media organizations began adhering to a new policy. Going forward, the families of victims
05:57would have to be notified before their names could be made public. Administrative wheels
06:01turned slowly, so this didn't happen until some time after the crash. But the origins of the
06:05policy very much tie into the events of February 3, 1959.
06:10Despite losing three of its most popular stars, the Winter Dance Party tour wasn't
06:14canceled after the plane crash. Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and The Big Bopper hadn't been
06:18the only acts on the roster. The lineup also included Frankie Sarto and Dion in the Belmonts.
06:23As such, the remaining musicians had to wrap up the Winter Dance Party tour with a truncated lineup.
06:28Waylon Jennings performed vocals during the Buddy Holly set, for example, while other teen favorite
06:32performers such as Frankie Avalon and Fabian flew in to round out the bill. Shockingly,
06:37the surviving musicians actually had to play a concert at the Armory in Minnesota on the very
06:41same day the plane crashed. They went on to play a total of 13 venues in as many days.
06:46The story of the day the music died didn't end in 1959. In fact,
06:50one strange rumor prompted investigators to reappraise the incident. A strange sequence
06:54of events ended with an autopsy of J.P. The Big Bopper Richardson in 2007, no less.
07:00Some two months after the crash, it was discovered that Buddy Holly had been carrying a gun on the
07:04plane. Due to this fact and the sudden nature of the crash, rumors began circulating that an
07:08exchange of gunfire had taken place during the flight, with Roger Peterson being shot in the
07:13crossfire. People also kept speculating over the fact that Big Bopper's body was found further
07:17away from the plane than the others. This led to the theory that he had somehow survived the crash
07:22and managed to free himself from the wreckage before succumbing to his injuries. In 2007,
07:26The Big Bopper's son, Jay Richardson, decided he'd finally had enough of the rumors,
07:30which had even spread through his own family.
07:32Every year they'd get together, the family would argue over,
07:37did he survive the crash, and was he going for help?
07:40He commissioned forensic anthropologist Dr. Bill Bass to examine his father's body to find out
07:44whether there was any truth to the rumors of his father still moving on his own accord after the
07:49crash — or taking a bullet, for that matter. Bass's findings were conclusive on both fronts.
07:53He told the CBC,
07:55"...there was no indication of foul play. There are fractures from head to toe,
07:58massive fractures. He died immediately. He didn't crawl away. He didn't walk away from the plane."
08:04The day the music died is etched into popular memory as the date of Buddy Holly's,
08:08Richie Valens', and The Big Bopper's deaths. However, there was also another plane crash
08:12on February 3, 1959. And when it came to the sheer loss of human life, this one was much worse.
08:18At 11.56 p.m. that night, American Airlines Flight 320 was approaching LaGuardia Airport
08:23in New York when the plane flew too low and crashed into the East River. The accident
08:27happened because of a combination of bad weather, the crew's inexperience with the plane,
08:31and issues with the altimeter. Due to the darkness, heavy wind, and rain,
08:35and the fast-moving river, locating survivors was difficult,
08:38and the rescuers were only able to save eight people from the wreckage. 65 people died.
08:43Obviously, the crash of Flight 320 marked a far greater loss of life than that of the
08:47musician's four-seater plane. Due to the cultural impact of the latter incident,
08:51however, the crash of Roger Peterson's light aircraft has been much better remembered by history.
08:56February 3, 1959 saw more than its fair share of tragedy, though not all of it was quite as
09:02dramatic as the crash in Iowa or the Flight 320 disaster. This also was the day Vincent Astor
09:07died of a heart attack, aged 67. While the name might not ring a bell, Astor's status and
09:12achievements might. Vincent Astor was part of the Astor family, who were the very first
09:16millionaires in the United States. As a result, they were massive movers and shakers in New
09:21York City's more powerful circles. Former prominent family members include Titanic victim
09:25John Jacob Astor and William Backhouse Astor, who built the family's fortunes to around $50
09:30million circa 1875, or well over $1.4 billion adjusted for inflation. Other members of the
09:36family have been involved in politics, inventions, and writing, but the family's financial backbone
09:40has long been real estate. Vincent Astor kept his eye on the ball when it came to real estate
09:45and other business, but he was also a notable philanthropist who supported various social
09:49reforms. He created the Vincent Astor Foundation to award grants to charitable institutions and
09:53gave several good real estate deals to New York's housing projects. His passing on February 3 kicked
09:58off the next phase in the family's story, beginning with a fight over his estate between his wife and
10:03his half-brother. Of course, the popular consciousness will always be more affected
10:07by the loss of a group of iconic musicians over the death of an elderly millionaire,
10:11but it's still fascinating to get a glimpse into what else was happening on the day the music died.
10:19you